[From NPR’s Monkey See blog, where the story includes more images and an extended video]

[Image: The creators of Breaking Bad judiciously use the point-of-shot sequence in critical scenes of the pilot, including when Walter White is forced to clean the tires of student’s car. Doug Hyun/Courtesy of AMC.]

Point Of View: How So Many Rooted For ‘Breaking Bad’s’ Walter White

by Michaeleen Doucleff
September 27, 2013

If you were still cheering for Walter White at the start of the sixth season (or, as AMC contracts call it, the second half of the fifth season), a mustard stain on a doctor’s jacket might be one reason why.

Just last month, the show’s creator, Vince Gilligan, marveled at the fact that, 56 episodes into Breaking Bad, fans were still rooting for the meth-cooking drug lord. “I would have guessed at this point that he would have lacked sympathizability,” he toldThe New York Times.

So why did at least some fans stick by Walt’s side despite his involvement in nearly two dozen murders and a drug empire that spans two continents?

The Expanded Narrative Symposium explores the multidisciplinary fields of interactive narrative that reconfigure the form and expand the experience of storytelling.

The reader, relocated, becomes a player, co-author or participant. How can we design, develop and experience locative sound, participatory theatre, pervasive and mobile games, flash fiction and works yet to be defined? Through the consideration of these questions, the symposium aims to promote knowledge exchange and collaboration between practitioners from the arts, academia and the creative industries. Read more on Call: Expanded Narrative Symposium…

I am conducting an online survey on gamers’ online gaming experiences, such as trash talking and related behaviours. I have received some responses from various sources. May I kindly ask for your help in filling out and sharing the survey link to your friends and people who play online. The survey takes on average 15 minutes.

[From Fast Company’s Co.Create, where the story includes more images and a video]

[Image: Death At The Border: Security camera footage was used to plop bystanders at the scene of Anastacio Hernández-Rojas’ death in a wraparound, fully-immersive digital world.]

Put On A Helmet, And You’re In The Story: Why Virtual Reality Journalism Is The Future

Google, the Associated Press, and the Tribeca Film Institute are funding one of the most ambitious virtual reality projects yet: A 3-D, fully immersive re-creation of the death of a migrant at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Nonny de la Peña isn’t your typical PhD candidate. The former Newsweek reporter turned University of Southern California doctoral candidate specializes in re-creating real-life news events as fully immersive virtual reality experiences. Inside de la Peña’s lab, a handful of colleagues use the Unity gaming engine and other tools to engineer 3-D reenactments of violent crimes and dramatic incidents that integrate original audio and video sources. Experiencing a movie on her customized headset is like stepping onto Star Trek‘s holodeck. It’s also a storytelling technology that Google, the Associated Press, and the Tribeca Film Institute are very interested in. Read more on Google, AP and Tribeca Film Institute fund ambitious immersive journalism project…

The letter has been one of the most important forms of communication over thousands of years across many cultures and continents. Whether personal, professional or an open statement of intent it can covey the most intimate messages or declare the most inflammatory of declarations. It can be delivered by hand, by postman, by pigeon, by bottle, by smartphone, by internet connection or even by space ship. It can be cherished, collected, published, censored, blogged, stolen, steamed open, torn up, buried, displayed. It can be written on paper, papyrus, skin, in the sand, in wax, on sweet wrappers and on computer screens. It can be written with quills, pens, keyboards, chalk and in ink, in blood, in lemon juice, in light, with love, with hate, with desperation, with pride, with humiliation and with satisfaction. Correspondingly, it can take seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks or even years to reach its destination, whether sent to someone in the next room, or via a time capsule to people 50 years in the future. A letter is not just the means to communicate to others, but a way in which we communicate who, what and where we are and the times that we live in, consequently, being as much about the interconnectedness of identity, place and culture through time as it is about the immediate connection to those around us.

A striking example of such interconnectedness and entanglement survives from ancient Rome in the Letters to Atticus of Marcus Tullius Cicero written between 68-44 BCE. Originally hand written on papyri using a reed pen, they were delivered using a network of slaves often taking up to 4 weeks to reach their destination. Intended only to be read by his friend, this private correspondence was published by an unknown editor sometime after Cicero’s death and enjoyed as a literary work. Now available as both book and hypertext, its rich contents provide valuable information on many aspects of Roman life, not to mention the history of his times.

Although Parkinson’s disease and macular degeneration have reduced the 86-year-old La Costa resident’s ability to walk, see and leave her one-bedroom apartment, she has no such limitations in the lushly landscaped Creations Park — a “sim” or virtual-reality world — in the online universe known as Second Life.

Shortened from Creations for Parkinson’s, the sim is an online community where people with Parkinson’s can interact through digital avatars to share stories, exercise, shop and enjoy an active life that is no longer possible with their physical bodies. Through her avatar “Fran Seranade,” Swenson said she has found a great hobby, friends, a support group and relief from some symptoms.

“It’s a place that gives me great satisfaction,” said Swenson, who lost her husband to Parkinson’s in 2003 and was diagnosed with the same disease a year later.